Trip Update - 18th July 2008 Treguier, France

Nutmeg of Shoreham
Ollie Holden
Fri 25 Jul 2008 20:26

Position:  48:47.18N 03:13.25W

 

Treguier, France

 

We ended up spending four days in Treguier, due to the good old weather, which was somewhat wet and windy.  We took this time to do our chores and have a good wander round the lovely old town.  It has an amazing cathedral which I have vague memories of seeing when I sailed this way back in 1994 when I went traveling after University. 

 

On the evening we arrived, we took ourselves off to a local restaurant to celebrate our arrival (I can see a tradition starting here), and had the first of what I expect to be many moules-frites, crepes and a bottle of vin de table.  The girls can wolf their way through a bowl of mussels faster than you can pick them out of their shells.  They aren’t in the least bit squeamish about seafood – holding up mussels and saying things like “this one looks like a butterfly”, or “ooh look, this one’s got an eye”, before chomping them up whole.

 

Another evening barbeque of prawns and sausages Nutmeg-style – lovely!

 

Another batch of prawns meets its fate

 

Sarah and I were married 5 years ago on 19th July, so we took ourselves off on a day out by bus to Paimpol, a lovely fishing town a few miles away, and had a lovely day out.  For lunch, we chose a restaurant which offered a “planche” menu, and when my steak-frites arrived, I understood the term – simply, it means your food comes on an enormous plank of wood!  The portions were huge so we had to drink an entire bottle of wine to wash it down. It is a tough trip.  As usual, the girls devoured a monster bowl of moules-frites each, followed by the obligatory ice cream.  We walked to a beach and the girls paddled in the very cold water.  It really is quite cold for late July!  I haven’t taken my fleece off for days!

 

Whilst in Treguier, I had a look round a local chandlery.  These are amazing places – a bit like Aladdins Cave used to be before it became a megastore – a real cave full of boating treasure, with stock hanging on rope from the ceiling, and a vast array of fishing equipment from lobster pots down to fish hooks, reels and reels of rope, traditional wooden-cheeked blocks and lots of brass barometers.  Their clothing sections are really Breton – striped jumpers and navy smocks being de rigeur.  After a lot of strange gesturing, I bought a pair of wire-cutters and a couple of knives which I will keep at each mast for emergencies.

 

It has to be said, the people of Britanny appear to be so much more involved with the sea than most English – either through sailing or fishing.  Every little sailing boat, when you look closely, seems to be kitted with hi-tech sails & ropes and there is such a great variety of design!  You know that if you see a Hallberg Rassy, Beneteau or Bavaria it will be a British yacht, but all the interesting, wacky designs are French.  They seem to be so much further ahead in their thinking than us Brits.  As a sailing population, we seem to have been hoodwinked by the marketing hype from the usual suspects (Beneteau, Bavaria, Raymarine etc) and it has suppressed any individual creative thinking that may have existed.  I have seen full-on Figaro-type racers kitted out for cruising, and no end of one-off aluminium shoal-draft boats with various appendages.  But when you see them sail, they sail well – fast & high. 

 

We, on the other hand, are in a somewhat unique league of our own, Nutmeg being such an old, seaworthy design.  There is the odd Contessa or Rival now and again but we haven't seen another Nic yet.  I have realized that my boat and I share some characteristics (and indeed these are common with other adventures I have done, such as the Pakistan and Sahara Landy trips) – scruffy, functional, driven hard and set up for adventure.  Perhaps my friends and colleagues can see some parallels.

 

By the way, I realized in my previous blog that I may have been a bit harsh on my colleagues’ and Accenture’s AIS abilities.  It is only fair to acknowledge that enhancing AIS to include identification of shipping relative to one’s GPS position alongside issuing motor insurance quotes & policies is simply a matter of some requirements sketched on a fag packet handed over to the mighty team in UK, Spain and India – give them a couple of months and I have no doubt the team would deliver this in a mini-release and a couple of Rapid Fixes …  I think I might start a Marine sector in Accenture when I return. There are all sorts of applications in the commercial and leisure sectors and it needs some competition.